"I heard that a smartphone based on the Optimus G would be the next Nexus phone and was quite simply blown away. Nexus has rarely been first to the latest and greatest in terms of hardware platforms, and certainly there was no way that combination would be inexpensive. For Google to nail the next Nexus phone it would have to be a combination of both"

The first time I read the article, I agreed with this sentence. But now I don't. HTC J Butterfly was released two months later. And it is the only phone (apart from Nexus 4) which is competitive in 2013. It would have been best if the next Nexus was based on HTC J Butterfly. Even if it ended up costing 50$ more.Reply

"The other common design element between the Optimus G and Nexus 4 is that nonconductive metallic plastic ring which extends around the perimeter of the device. This is something that comes off as tacky in the US market but (I’m told) is still a somewhat attractive motif in the Korean market."

I have been following anandtech from very start. Now I am seeing some disturbing stuff in this site. For example comparing some of the battery life tests I see that there is inconsistency between reports that Anand published and ones that I see in arstechnica, or tomshardware, or even Gigaom. They seem to be on a very special setting that favors apple more often. I have an iphone, ipad, and also galaxy nexus. comparing them I don't think there is that much difference.

I leave it to the reader but what I think a site like this that puts lots of effort, should not be biased (or seen so). It hearts the reputation. You have some type of reviews that no one else offer. please don't ruin it!Reply

Lovely review, Brian, as usual, but I have a question. Forgive me if I just glanced over this, but have you run your benchmarks using the newest OTA which rolled out over the last day or are these running the same software as those posted earlier in the month? In any case, it would be interesting to see if there are any changes in the XML file which seems to specify temperature shelves. Reply

I do whenever possible, always. The issue is what happens when devices crash out before a full run (Optimus G) which then forces my hand to do this piece-by-piece kind of testing and reassemble a whole run.

Because it is closed source thus we dont know exactly what paths it takes (meaning it could disproportionately harm one particular device over another)?Hell, do we need even know what compiler they use? Knowing that and the flags used would certainly be very useful.Reply

We'd get driver reviews, we'd get hardware other than video cards, motherboards, and CPU's reviewed, we'd get the skinny on new custom PC hardware that was coming...

I'm waxing nostalgic here. I miss those days, I think. These smartphone reviews are just beginning to bore me to tears. Maybe I'm just old, but I miss the good ol' days. Back when phones were something we just lived with rather than something people seem to obsess over now.

Back when having the latest and greatest in computing was more about smart hardware selection and less about going to the store, slapping down your cc, and saying, "Gimme your best, barkeep!"Reply

I remember those days really well. Mobile computing is the future of the industry. Furthermore Anandtech still reviews computer cases, HTPCs, and the latest, greatest hardware. I like to think of it as the best of both worlds.Reply

"Mobile computing" will not get truly mobile until we get decent battery life.Meanwhile, AnandTech keeps lauding devices that have more computing power than most of us ever utilize at the expense of battery life (not to mention non-user-changeable batteries, throttling, etc.)Reply

I don't read every article Anandtech publishes; in fact, if there is an article I just skim through, or skip entirely, it will be one about any kind of mobile computing, including smart phones. It doesn't bother me though that Anandtech spends as much time on these things as they do because they still do plenty of high quality articles on mainboards, CPUs, graphics cards, PSUs - the things I am interested in, and they have added editors to cover additional types of hardware, and, bottom line, I don't expect everything they publish to have me in mind.

They still do more in depth CPU and architecture articles than most sites, probably due in large part to Anand's knowledge and contacts. They've been doing a ton of case reviews too... Motherboards have been boring for quite a while. I don't think any of that content has suffered much. The one thing I'd say has suffered is GPU reviews, Anand does a great job of analyzing new architectures at times but their benchmark methods (and variety of tested resolutions) pale in comparison to other sites IMO.Reply

Not that I'm complaining mind you, there's other places to read about that stuff... However none of the quasi-blogs that cover the mobile industry do phone reviews as detailed and in depth as AT. Something as simple as standardized battery testing seems to elude the entire web outside of AT, at best you might find rundown tests with a movie or something lazy like that.Reply

I have a Galaxy Nexus and was looking to possibly upgrade to the Nexus 4 but there are a few big issues with the phone for me:

1. No LTE and it isn't available on Verizon (at least right now).2. Max of 16GB flash memory. I have the LTE Nexus and enjoy the 32GB of flash memory.3. Headphone jack and charging port are on OPPOSITE sides of the phone. This is the biggest fail for me. I use my Galaxy Nexus in my car nearly every day and having those two connectors on the same side is very important.

The Nexus 4 will never come to Verizon. Not including LTE was primarily a political move, secondary a battery life consideration, and tertiary for SKU simplicity.

Verizon had their hands all over the Android releases on the Samsung Nexus causing them to be delayed or scrapped for the next release. It's a dev phone though. Google needs to be able to roll out whatever it wants to when it wants to. Breaking carrier control on handsets is part of what Google has been trying to do with their Nexus phones.

32GB of memory is unnecessary with Google services like Music and Drive. Everything is on the cloud so why does it also need to be on your phone?Reply

I say you need to take battery life test with a grain of salt. My SGS3 didn't have the best battery life tests on paper, but in real time it's a champ. My gf shoots me with her envy look while holding her iphone 4s. She can't go through a day with a charge while I can easily do 2 days ;)Reply

"My God why is the battery life so crap? How does the HTC X manage to beat it? "

I wonder if it has to do with HTC One-X overly aggressively killing background apps . As I recall there were a lot of complaints about no multitasking on the One X. I bet that would improve battery life. Reply

That wouldn't diminish power usage by memory a whole lot, and HTC actually went back and addressed it with a patch so it behaves much much closer to other phones. I think the biggest issue is they 're cramming a tablet-bound SoC into a phone (see the thermal throttling issues) without even giving it a larger battery.Reply

Why do the speaker volume test at just 3" away? How about normal browsing distance? (k, that's subjective, I guess, but for a typical person browsing the internet/watching a video) Cupping the speaker vs not cupping the speaker etc. Watching a clip on youtube, netflix or whatever on my Galaxy Nexus is such a pain if there is even the slightest ambient noise. Reply

I'm glad you confirmed the thermal throttling hypothesis, but it's a shame that it's happening at all. While no Google or LG exec is going to come out and tell everyone to use their phone in the cold, I see this turning into the Android version of the "your holding it wrong" meme. Perhaps Google should ship some capacitative gloves so Canadians and Scandinavians can enjoy their phones under ideal conditions ;P?

Also, battery performance. It's half the iPhone 5's. Half.

Given the price and the nexus pedigree, I'm still going to buy this phone, warts and all. But the performance of the device in browsing and battery life is terribly disappointing.Reply

That suggests that the tests are not very useful.Frankly, I really like the idea of Vellamo. Testing interface performance is really useful.The web browsing test might also be useful if it is well done (not sure if enough time is provided between page loads to actually read the page).Perhaps use of a framework that takea actual apps and feeds them dummy data to simulate usage.Testing is hard... Reply

The one time they could have gone with a slighly out of date SoC (the MSM8960 with its more efficient integrated baseband, or possibly the PRO) they didn't... ending up with a very power hungry platform that throttles and barely has enough battery life. Personally, I think I will disable two of the cores, but it's very appreciable that they're moving faster than before. I was really hoping for an OMAP5 (the first BIG.little A15 implementation) in the next nexus phone, obviously a few months from now, but I'll make do with the S4.

It is, as usual, great how google keeps an eye on NAND performance, it really is a bottleneck in modern smartphones. Hopefully something better than 0.8MB/s random writes will be available in the near future... yes, it's 3 times faster than the competition, but still too low. We need 4/5.

I'm quite a bit against all this "high build quality" (which is apparently all about non-plastic materials) trend: not that I don't like better built phones, but plastic is FINE. It just has to be properly used, avoiding tacky chrome and glossy parts: the upside of having a lighter chassis with a removable door, and thus a repleaceble battery (which can probably be larger thanks to the spared weight) largely overcomes the improved aesthetics. Not to mention it's much less prone to serious damage as it manages to absorbs impacts well.A glass back might be cool, but I won't notice it anymore after a week... until it breaks.The real problems are Korean designers, not plastic materials.

In the end, higher battery life and storage space would have been much better, but at this price I won't complain, there's nothing even nearly as good. Heck, even $200 more would have been fair - and still cheaper than the competition.

Still, such a non-replaceable low lasting battery can and will be a dealbreaker to many just as much as the lack of storage. But the price is good enough to make me come to a compromise, disable 2 cores in the kernel and start carrying around a portable charger and OTG cable.I wonder if anyone will make a nice battery cover with integrated storage :)Reply

I think you seriously underestimate how long most PhD theses are. This could probably easily double as an engineering undergrad senior/final project though, as could many of our more in-depth reviews.Reply

Mean nothing in real life. The N4 flies through tasks in practical usage. Bring me an iPhone5 and show me how it is faster in any way. Synthetic benchmarks are, for the most part, useless. Esp, cross-platform ones.Reply

The iPhone 5 isn't faster, its software is more optimized. Chrome is well known to really "suck" in javascript and scrolling performance on Android. Even Dolphin Browser beats it in each performance category. Samsung's stock browser on the SGS3 is probably the best Android browser out there, I wonder how well it would perform on the Nexus 4's CPU. Chrome is nice for syncing bookmarks across all your devices in addition to some stuff, but otherwise, it really sucks.

In the GPU benchmark tests where the A6 (PowerVR SGX543 MP3) beats the APQ 8064 (Snapdragon S4 Pro's Adreno 320), These are sub-scores (sub-tests) that don't really show the "big picture". They test the GPU of the platform for several shader-centric tasks. Those who use these benchmarks are looking for specific numbers for specific purposes.

What really matters in GLBenchmark for most consumers is the "Egypt Classic" and "Egypt HD" tests. These tests show the gaming/GPU performance of the platform as a whole, with the former testing "generic" 3D gaming capabilities, and the latter testing for the most modern demanding games (that stresses the platform/shaders for most fillrate, vertex, and compute performance. It's mostly over-kill and you wont see games demanding the same anytime soon). You'll easily achieve 60fps with any game you run on the Nexus 4 even with a higher resolution than the iPhone 5...

The Nexus 4 should prove to be better performing and more "future-proof" than the iPhone 5, since it has a faster CPU (quad core Krait VS dual core Swift) and a GPU that supports future standards like OpenGL ES 3.0, Open CL and Renderscript, unlike the PowerVR inside the A6 chip. Software optimization is a non-issue since it can be tuned-up in future updates or different browsers from Play Store in the case of the web browser.

There are lots of metrics to consider in cross-platform/cross-OS benchmarking, and there's absolutely NO benchmark that will show the true difference of performance among different platforms, especially with "Android VS Android" or "Android VS iOS" because each Android OEM utilizes different hardware and different software optimizations (in addition to other factors, like thermal throttling in this review's case). That's probably not the case when comparing the iPhone 5 versus the 4S or even a Windows Phone 8 devices versus another device running the same OS because both platforms use vertically integrated hardware/software, but that's where firmware and driver version differences start to kick in, but it's closer to reality than anything related to Android.Reply

Not at half the price of other phones. Also Android and especially Nexus is an open platform, so that automatically shuts the door on CDMA and consequently the biggest LTE carrier in the US. Nobody who has good HSPA+ cares.Reply

In Europe you get pretty good carrier support with just quad band LTE which is showing up now. All USIM, plus Band 7, Band 20, Band 8, Band 3 covers most here and is available in most countries. In Sweden we started on Band 7 and now runs networks at Band 20 and Band 8 too. So we can actually get devices now which runs on all the frequencies either in use or that will be refarmed. Similar in other countries here. Most carriers has a few bands. You do need to support more then one. More troublesome in the US obviously. It is looking up finally though. DC-HSPA+ is up an running too so, even in small communities. It's not bad, at least not if you are able to use wifi for heavier/larger stuff.Reply

Clearly the Nexus 4 is not named as such because it's the 4th Nexus phone like you mention. If that was the case the Nexus 7 and 10 would throw a wrench in that wouldn't it? It's named that way because the screen is 4(.7)". If you look at the Nexus logo on the site they even de-emphasize the number by making it a small superscript to "nexus" and saying "now in three sizes." The fact that it's the 4th Nexus is just a coincidence. I would expect them to keep these names going forward and just release a Nexus 4 2nd gen, 3rd gen, etc.Reply

Wow, that didn't even occur to me, but it could be a real problem. It's not like latex is an uncommon allergy either, so hopefully Google or LG thought about that and used something other than rubber.Reply

Should have used a dual core CPU with a decent GPU. Quad core is a waste in phones because overall it hurts battery life more than it helps certain usage models, and if there's so much throttling what's the point.

Does Android do thread parking? Do these CPUs have per-core power gating?Reply

Throttling may not be an issue in the real world in terms of a noticeable affect and may just show up in benchmarks. In other words, who cares what the benchmark performance is if its at such a high level it's not perceptible? What I never see explained is how far apart do you need to get before you can distinguish one device's performance from another. Granted on most of the tests the iPhone far outpaces any other phone, but is it even noticeable? Are we just talking bragging rights, future proofing, etc?Reply

The value of a faster CPU on a phone, for normal people, right now, is that the phone feels snappier. So, for example, an iPhone5 feels perceptibly faster than an iPhone 4S not because computational tasks take 1 minute instead of 2 minutes, but because a dozen small things take .1 second instead of .2 seconds.

From this point of view(a) thermal throttling is no big deal, and I personally have no problem with it. It was a good idea when Intel started it years ago (to the accompaniment of a massive chorus of whining) and it would be a fine idea to have it as built into an ever wider selection of phone chips.

(b) quad-core remains a solution in search of a problem. Maybe one day it will have value; maybe it has value for games (which I don't care about). But for the way I and my crowd use phones, it has no value yet.

(c) the present collection of benchmarks are largely useless because they do NOT track this essence of snappiness which is what most people mean when they say a phone is "fast". Yes, if you're a developer writing demanding code you care about very particular aspects of the phone --- perhaps you care about the memory bandwidth, or the FLOPs, or the random flash write performance. But for most people, what matters is the snappiness. Existing benchmarks are a poor proxy for that feeling, and I do wish the serious blogs could do better.

Right now all we have is this lame sniping like 12 yr olds: "My Nokia feels fast", "Oh yeah, well my Samsung feels even faster", "Well my iPhone feels fastest of all". And regardless of your feelings about Apple, if you support Team Android or Team Windows, you should be pushing for snappiness benchmarks because that is one of Apple's great strengths --- they don't care about, and don't optimize for benchmark numbers, they optimize for snappiness, and buyers do appear to be aware of and notice this. As long as the non-Apple market is forced to compete on these "overt" benchmarks as ways for each vendor to differentiate themselves and show their technical superiority, what will be optimized for are benchmark numbers, NOT user feel and snappiness.Reply

I think with a DSLR at 60 FPS and editing to synchronize individually recorded videos it would be possible to do accurate side by side comparison of app responsiveness and web page loads. With a bit of video analysis, graphs could be made comparing performance down to the frame and FPS in animations measured.

You could even do this on the go for a real world performance comparison. A normal day of use could be simulated by walking/commuting around your city and setting up a tripod in an apartment, on the sidewalk, inside an office building, at the bar etc. Then run several tests on each phone where you get the phone out of your pocket like normal and open a web page, post a comment, take a photo etc. all while the screen is on camera. Several similar tasks could be averaged into a single category score for a bit better repeatability.

With proper analysis of the resulting video a pretty damn accurate comparison of the whole cellular, hardware and software system could be made. Basically the ultimate benchmark measuring user phone performance. I've seen some well done side by side comparisons but never in depth or with good numbers along with the video.Reply

So we know a whole bunch about how the browser performs, and a lot of how Imagination Technologies press demo performs, any chance at some point you may decide to bench the CPU *at all* and perhaps run at least a single meaningful GPU bench?Reply

Can we plus one this fella above?I've really been looking forward to a thorough review of the krait architecture (including the new adreno 300 series) but there doesnt appear to be much interest on the AT side to do this.Reiterating, I'd love to see the same kind of in depth the testing and analysis that was given to Swift. Qualcomm, like apple, is pretty secretive about their products. Performing some targeted tests would go a long ways towards giving us a better picture of the Arm landscape. Reply

The thermal throttling configuration is very aggressive. According to Nexus 4's thermald.conf, throttling is entirely based on battery temperature, with anything below 36 C giving the full 1.5GHz on the CPU and 400MHz on the GPU. By 39 C, the CPU is only running at 1.2GHz and GPU at 200MHz, which reflects the non-freezer results.Reply

According to other reviews, yes, it is quite brittle (the verge dropped it from a table to a hard wood floor and a spidery crack emerged from the corner to the camera module and that wasnt the onlg review that had problems with durability). A case is highly suggested. Reply

That's a big turnoff IMO. I'd love to see a poll on AT to find out what percentage of readers actually uses cases or not tho...

I find myself tempted every year to go caseless but I never end up doing it for several reasons. Slim TPU cases allow me to put the phone down screen first without worrying about it, and it protects the camera too. Cases also help mitigate impact from drops and protect my resale value too...

Basically I could care less for in hand feel, gonna be feeling the case anyway. I'd rather just have an all around sturdier phone. I can appreciate the design of something like the One X over most Samsung designs but it's not a huge deal to me.

Hell I don't even think my EVO LTE is as fugly as some make it out to be, and the metal build seems rather solid.Reply

IIRC, the verge mentioned something about Google releasing some kind of case that mainly protects the corners (I think they said it was something like the case apple put out for the iphone 4), but I could be mistaken.I've a nexus s and I've never used a case and the phone looks pretty much brand new (the screen did break awhile back after cat shot [as in, he was running, phone was in the way] the phone onto ceramic tile floor in the kitchen...so, about as nasty a fall as a phone will take). For the nexus 4, which I'm going to get, I will almost certainly get a case.About the build quality, something that others have mentioned, and reviewers frequently forget (though not so much here), is that in hand feel has relatively little to with how well the device will survive impacts.The iphone 4/s had great in hand feel but the damn thing is brittle as all hell.Samsung phones, while "plasticy", survive drops well (excepting the latest generation, apparently). However, you should keep in mind I actually like the in-hand feel of my nexus. It has almost no sharp angles and sits so comfortably in hand, and slides in and out of my pocket so easily.Reply

yeah this is something I'd like to know as well. I still bought it, but the only thing I'm having worries about is being able to take a usb full of movies on it for a flight or something. A super short OTG cable and one of those USB drives that sticks out like 2mm would be great.

In the end, if not supported out of the box (like the N7) then ill just root and use stickmountReply

There's an app a ton of people are using with the N7 sans root that allows them to import or even stream video from USB devices using OTG, it's a pretty solid workaround for those that would rather avoid rooting.Reply

I would be tempted to try this phone, except for the battery life. That could probably be mitigated somewhat by buying a few charging mats, but still I don't think I could ever go back from having all-day no hassle battery life to having to watch the battery meter again to make sure that my phone isn't going to turn off.

Also, the glass back sounds a bit dangerous, but it's a relief to hear you dropped it a few times with no ill-effects.Reply

Brian, let me thank you for this fantastic review. Its probably going to be the definitive review of the Nexus 4. The level of detail just made me smile! And thanks for the audio fidelity part (graph missing?) and teaming up with François was just what I needed. I'll await his (or your) detailed analysis of that part.

I'm confused. The phone seems to have horrible performance, making it one of the slowest Android phones in the benchmarks (doesn't matter to users why the browser benchmarks are so bad, only that they are) and terrible overheating problem, but it's "the phone to get?"

It sounds more like a critically flawed product that should be avoided at all costs. There are plenty of other Android phones that don't have performance or overheating problems.Reply

Until you include the price of a carrier plan? Or were you planning to use this smartphone without any phone capabilities? Apple iphone sells so well *inspite* of its premium price because most people who buy it buy with plans.Reply

This is the best thing Google does (make phones that can be used on any service provider), in my opinion. $300 (or $350) for a top-end phone you can use on any carrier? Almost makes my desire for a Nokia 920 Win 8 phone go away.

Then, I think about Android compared to Win 8, and realize that will likely never happen.

Thanks for the thorough review. Too bad this phone will go largely unnoticed in the US amongst non-enthusiasts, and almost wholly ignored by any one on CDMA. Those of wanting LTE (who also acknowledge that a nexus on VZW is a hard feat to accomplish) are left wanting more, and *gasp* looking at the iPhone 5. I wanted this to be my next, but I'm not willing to switch to have it.

I hope the folks around the world make this phone super-successful and can make this phone a game changer in the Android landscape (and here in the US where carriers rule and the customers drool). That's a lot to ask, but I'm still hopeful.Reply

I do not understand how Google can sell a "flagship" phone which is unable to complete a 3D benchmark without thermal throttling.

This is unacceptable, do they expect people who run intensive 3D apps such as games to take a liquid cooling kit with them?

Also unacceptable is the lack of browser optimizations for this SoC.

The Snapdragon S4 Pro is a BEAST, with 2x the theoretical CPU power than pretty much any other ARM SoC (with the exception of the Cortex A15 which is only for tablets now), and yet one sees lackluster performance in most browser related tests.

This is a diamond which hasn't been polished at all... the only thing going for it is the price.Reply

The throttling is not an issue if it doesn't result in any real world performance slowdown. Although the reviewer adds subjective comments to the battery life section, I would like to see some comments as to how benchmark performance actually relates to real world performance. What seems to be poor performance in a benchmark may not even be apparent when playing a 3D intensive game.Reply

I suppose the end result explains how thry achieved the price of $300.About the SoC, is there anyway AT could do a more detailed review of the s4 pro? Perhaps something like what you did for Swift?There is something seriously wrong with the s4 pro. Singke threaded performance shouod be really similar to the s4 but it is always as good bit slower. The memory performance has likewise regressed.Has there been actual architectural changes made that causes this or is it something software releated (perhaps core affinity is nonexistent causing processes to keep moving between cores thus harming single thread performance). Reply

Hi Brian,thanks for all the hard work that flowed into this review. Your drive to put out the best reviews is evident and you are succeeding when measured in the amount of data and information.

However, I'm considering this phone for my wife, and wanted to send it to her for a read. That is until I realized the enormous amount of comparisons to other phones, to other chips, etc. make it a really hard read. Somehow the text is a review and a history lesson mixed in one. I'd wished there would be a structure like the following:* Introduction* Form factor, feel, usability* The phone's innards and benchmarks* Comparison to phone X* Comparison to phone Y...* The good, the bad, the ugly and conclusion

Funny that I'm as ambivalent about the phone. On the one side it looks great on price and basic features and independence of carriers and phone companies and their skin shenanigans (Why don't they compete on useful social or productivity software or at least make the skin removable). And I don't even need LTE, and can live w/o more memory. But then there is the thermal throttling going on and that just makes me uneasy. While it may not mean that much in today's real world applications, it is unnerving, that performance is something not reliable. It is there, but when you really use it it disappears. Reminds me of the unlimited ISP plans with speeds depending on your neighbor's usage and caps set so that they'll hurt in three years. I hope for really useful apps in three years to actually catch up to four cores.

What also bother's me is the camera. The low light performance is xoxo. But this horrible yellow tint is not something I'd appreciate. Can anybody recommend PC/ Mac OS X software to correct this? Can one set up something like a monitor calibration profile?Reply

Not a problem with the review itself, but chrome is so far behind on Android that it absolutely kills the experience. If you compare AOSP browser vs chrome, not only does the AOSP browser faster in feel but kills chrome in benchmarks. It is pathetic that the Nexus 4 with krait scores 1800 ms sunspider but the Gnex on AOSP scores much better says something about the software Google chose to ship with.Reply

How exactly does this phone get less talktime and wifi hotspot then a gsm galaxy nexus which has like 25% less batter capacity...................I am dissapointed. This s4 pro chipset sucks they should have just stuck with the regular s4 chipset , I don't care about gpu performance. Reply

Nexus 4 seems like a complete rip off really, With the HTC One-X I can get 32GB of flash for virtually same price and have %50 more battery life and beat the nexus in most CPU benchmarks etc.http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/htc-one-x-white/

I think they will still sell a lot of these though, the phone market moves too fast for people to notice other phone prices are falling underneath them.Reply

I'm just wondering if putting a case on (to protect that glass back, ugh) would hinder or prevent the phone's wireless charging capability.I notice that Google only makes the bumper accessory, which leads me to believe it would be an issueAnyone have any insight on this?Reply

Have you ever put an iPhone in the freezer and published the resulting benchmarks, or any other phone for that matter?Something smells funny here! I always thought Anandtech to be impartial before.Reply

Meh, that is how they statistically show you that thermal throttling is affecting the performance. Your accusation would have help good if they had only published the freezer benchmarks. But they published both because they wanted to showcase that the phone thermally throttles itself (i.e. a negative point about the phone)... How exactly is that partial?Reply

I think it is particularly significant that this phone was selected to be the first phone that was actually put in a freezer and the results published, why not the iPhone or some other phone that was known to be trottling?Seriously, think about it.There is a big difference between stating that a phone throttles and the theoretical performance is X and actually putting a phone in the freezer and publishing the resulting benchmarks.I am entitled to my opinion, and my opinion here is that somebody is working for the man, the wrong man.Reply

There is quite a big difference between stating that a phone is throttling and the theoretical performance should be X, and putting a phone in the freezer and publishing the resulting benchmarks.The choice of phone to be the first to recieve this treatment is suspicious to me.My opinion, which I am entitled to, is that somebody is working for the man, the wrong man.This is evident to me, think about it yourself.Reply

People are aready taklking in the comments about how this phone has to be put in the freezer in order to gain maximum performance from it.People are not saying the same about the iPhone, that is the significance.As I said something fishy going on here and I don't like it.In fact this is the first time Anandtech has dissapointed me with a review, but it is a rather large dissapointment.Reply

I think you are referring to the NAND Flash, but in either case the NAND and RAM are soldered to the mainboard. Brian made the following comment in the section, "Inside the Nexus 4" (page 7 of the review) regarding the NAND:

"I couldn’t get the can off of what appears to be the eMMC (the only remaining large package), we’ll have to see if anyone else wants to do some destructive digging to get that one."

He is referring to the device under the EMI shield (with a QR code label) in the lower left corner of this image:

The performance tests are hilarious. Of what use is a result that has to be achieved by placing the phone in the freezer? I usually don't sit in the freezer when using my smartphone so what are these numbers supposed to tell me?

There are other comments above that address this question. In summary, the freezer tests verify that the initial performance issues were the result of thermal throttling. It is a troubleshooting technique, not a lifestyle recommendation.Reply

Article says: "In fact having the photo table daydream going will slow down charging on that device somewhat dramatically if you’re not careful."

I am pleasantly surprised with the Daydream feature, I expect they'll add more settings options for fine-tuning customization, but it's a great start. There is zero interference with charging because all you have to do is press the power button once to turn off the screen! Then no daydream and no powerdrain on that front! But for those times when your're not worried about charging your device but have it docked or sitting someplace and would like to enjoy soothing colors or favorite pictures, the Daydream screensaver feature is a pleasant option.Reply

If the phone has to placed in the freezer to get all the performance you paid for then the phone is broke. Thanks to this review the phone went from a must buy to a wait till its fixed. Why anyone would buy this phone after reading your review is a retarded fanboy. Thanks for a informative review. Reply

>>Not so fast. If the tests suite was intense like i think it's then even iphone 5 will get overheated.

But in this test it did not. And in any benchmark in which iphone5 will overheat, the Nexus 4 will overheat and throttl even worse!

I want Android and Nexus to do well, because they represent a more user-friendly (freedom) choice to iphone. But Google seriously need to address overheating, battery life and other such fundamental issues. Nexus 4 is a crappy device, at any price. I hope future software/firmware updates mitigate some of the problems.Reply

Just a small mistake in article: "First, audioflinger is set to 48 kHz which results in software resampling causing artifacts for 41.1 kHz source material.". It should be 44.1. not 41.1, I think...Reply

Seems Google has a problem with allowing the user to expand his storage beyond what they give you. Why is that?

The phone comes with 16gb internal flash memory, but no way of expanding it. This seems to be a popular trend with all Google-branded Nexus devices (Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 tablet are the same). The lack of sdcard support in an Android device kills the ability to set up a Windows drive letter for it. Without that drive letter many popular programs like Calibre have an issue attaching to the device to manage things like ebooks (this is a real pain in the ass with my nexus 7!!). I for one like the freedom popping in another 64GB microSD card gives me.

The lack of a removable battery also hurts this phone. I have hard experience with the life of li-Ion batteries losing capacity over time in laptops. Every couple years I have to get new batteries because the Li-Ion battery loses capacity until it cant keep my laptop alive for more than 20 minutes without dying. I like Samsungs because I can always replace the battery cheaply when it goes south and I don't have to send my phone (and private data) away for servicing to do it.

Beyond these two (as I consider them major) gripes, this is a really nice phone.Reply

With regard to the non-removable battery issue, most of the people I know don't like non-removable batteries because it limits their ability to whip out a backup battery when they need the extra juice while they're no the go.

However, if the issue is with replacing the battery as it gets older, you can do it yourself! It even tells you how to do it in the review. You can buy authentic OEM batteries off of Ebay and do everything yourself, with the right tools. Some sellers will even ship the tools!Reply

While the article tells you how to change the battery yourself, they do not mention that if you do that, you void your warranty (granted the warranty is gone after the battery goes south anyway). There are a lot of folks that cringe at the though of splitting open their $500-600 US phone to replace a battery.

I for one don't keep a #4 torx screwdriver around.

The ability to whip in a new battery in 2 sec without special tools in a vendor-blessed manner is a bit plus to me.

Now if only Samsung (or anyone else - I'm not a brand fanboy) would put out an Android-based phone with quad-core Krait or A15, 2GB memory, 32GB expandable storage and user-replaceable battery, I would ebay my SG3 in a heatbeat and be all over it.Reply

What I don't get is although the price and specs are very attractive for an unlocked: no contract phone, 8 or 16GB is really small by today's standards when there is no microSD slot! Google is obviously assuming you will be connected to the net 24/7 and streaming your music and videos via Google Play and other services. But then your data usage goes through the roof! Will this aggressive pricing force more carriers to offer truly unlimited data plans and more reasonable prices?

Also, HPSA+ is fast enough for most, but lack of LTE is another compromise to get that good price. Yet it still is "the buzz" (note that the sellout time means nothing without knowing the number of units sold.)

So maybe the other key to the popularity of this device may be that with the younger generation, their phone is sort of a status symbol to them. Who can wait 2-years for contract renewal to get a new phone? But who can afford a $900 iPhone with no contract? BAM - Nexus 4 - I can get the latest gadget with specs good enough to brag about, with no contract, and without having to eat Top Ramen for a month to afford it. Who cares it doesn't have enough memory to store my video, photos and MP3 collection. I'll put it all on the Cloud and run my data usage through the roof instead.Reply

The phone is obviously the same as the Optimus G, as well as the thermal design.

Therefore is not about the Nexus 4 getting hotter, it's about the Nexus 4 being explicitly more conservative.

It's something that can be fixed by software. Just set the same thermal thresolds and you have identical performance to the optimus G.

And to those who compare it to the iPhone 5... seriously, it's half the price! One must REALLY consider if $350 extra dollars are worth some hours of battery life. It's pretty clear that at $299 some compromises must be assumed, otherwise iPhone 5 wouldn't be an option. Would it?Reply

Great review all in all, but I just started to wonder why the galaxy note 2 is not included in any of the performance, battery & connectivity graphs? Some weeks earlier there was a review about the Note2 (T-mobile). Is Anandtech making a new review with the international version of N7100 or N7105 in the future or is there some other reason I have not figured out yet?

Keep in mind these devices have the same SoC (the DNA was running android 4.1.1).So, that out of the way, the DNA STOMPED the nexus 4.On Quadrant (yes, I know, how does it determine those numbers), the DNA was about 90% faster than the nexus 4.On smartbench the DNA was about 40% faster.ON Vellamo html5 DNA was about 90% faster.AnTuTu the DNA was about 40% faster.

The iPhone 5 and iPad 4 sure wiped the floor with the Nexus 4.Amusing to see Android kids all of a sudden not care about LTE, glass back, no SD card slot when that was supposed to be a travesty on the iPhone 4s.Good luck getting a signal on T-Mobile os the HSPA networks that AT&T is deprecating as fast as they can in favor of LTE.Once again we see what a dumb idea it was to use a JVM on a smartphone.Reply

Unlocked GSM & powerful processor to fully take advantage of unlimited 4G data, talk & txt. That's the kind of service that I get for only $49/mo or less! :) Check out the 1-min video intro at: http://www.PenniesOverDollars.comReply

Before reading this article, I heard that the S3 was the king of Android devices, and that the iPhone 5 was barely catching up when it came out. Seems the propaganda is very effective in the smartphone world.

I'm not sure why people on this thread are not talking about how badly the Android phones perform next to the Apple devices.Reply

I must say this is an impressive review, very detailed and informative and it should serve as a very good read for all potential Nexus 4 buyers. Bravo!

Nonetheless, I wish you could include more information about its thermal performance. How warm does it get and which part of the phone warms up the most? Is it uncomfortable to hold after prolonged gaming/browsing? Perhaps using a thermal monitor to inspect its surface temperature would be enough to gauge its thermal dissipation ability. To me, coming from a phone who will simply reboot due to overheating, having a cool phone will make a better experience and surely longer battery life (in term of overall acquisition of the phone)! Any chance to see that part being added?Reply

How does the one x international beat the nexus 4 in all batterylife tests?! Every site I've seen complains about the one x batterylife which is whats holding me from getting one. Is the one x international in the battery tests on the latest jb update?!Reply

My point is...GLBenchmark show differences betweeen GPUs like Mali and Adreno that are totally unrealistic.All games run as good or better on the Galaxy Note 2 than the Nexus 4 yet with GLBenchmark you will think the 4 will run circles around the Note 2 so I dont see the point on that benchmark if it does not relate to real life at all.Reply

I've been married to the Apple ecosystem for the last several years, but more and more, I'm really intrigued by what Android offers, particularly with regards to how it streamlines and organizes things (the card system, displaying multiple bits of info on a single page, etc.). I have alot of trouble with organization in my life, so any systems/software/etc. that can help streamline things and act as closely to a digital assistant as possible would be very valuable to me.

Also, I love the Podcasts you guys do, and was interested if you could elaborate on the whole "iOS is like an appliance, Android is a computing device" I've heard Anand mention a few times now.

Basically: as somebody already in the Apple ecosystem, but willing to change (and pretty technically inclined), what are your feelings regarding the two OSes? What would you suggest? Thanks! =)Reply

hey i was just wondering i am going to try to swap my battery and was wondering if that will void the warranty i just bought. is there any security tape when you take it apart. i didnt see any but i just want to make sure.Reply

You should revisit the newest Nexus devices again. With Chrome Beta, the Nexus 10 and Nexus 4 bury the iPad, and iPhone 5 in Sunspider, Kraken, Octane, Browsermark and the RIA javascript benchmark. The Mali-T604 is behind, when it comes to GPU power, but the Adreno 320 is still very competitive. Take a look at the average GLBenchmark T-Rex HD off-screen benchmarks. Qualcomm is doing it right, and I'm patiently waiting for the S800. It's sad that Google's crappy Chrome for Android was holding everything back, but that's not the case anymore. Chrome Beta is actually awesome, and I use it more than the AOSP browser.